The popular name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’, which was the brainchild of Doctor Robert Atkins. He had gained a lot of weight while in medical school and after reading about a certain diet in the medical journal, he decided to improve it and release it under his own name.
Atkins, in his Atkins Diet book, wrote that he believed that the prevailing theories about putting on weight were completely wrong. First, he dismissed the notion that saturated fats were bad; instead he said it was it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have these days. Atkins declared that our obsession with avoiding fat actually worsened the problem. He pointed out that the low-fat foods that were high in carbohydrates were not helping the nation, which probably meant that people on a diet often ate foods that were worse for them than what they had normally eaten.
The Atkins diet moved the focus. Atkins said that by cutting out carbohydrates, people would burn stored body fats. And if you lose the fat, you lose the weight. He said it was not just a matter of eating less. Dr. Atkins held that your diet could actually help you burn calories. The Atkins diet supposedly burned more calories than were consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.
Dr. Atkins also touted the positive influence that his diet should have on suffers of Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease you usually get early in life, but Type 2 is more often closely associated with diet and excess body weight. Therefore, it should follow that any diet that helps reduce weight, will help people with Type 2 diabetes. The Atkins diet is low in carbohydrates, which must be avoided by those with Type 2 diabetes regardless of the caloric intake, which the Atkins diet does, so Atkins claimed that those who suffer Type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. Doctors do not agree with Atkins on this point, although they do agree, that a lower carbohydrate intake helps control Type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause diabetes.
What does one have to do to follow the Atkins diet? Well, it goes in four phases – Induction; On-Going Weight loss; Pre-maintenance; and Lifetime Maintenance. This is a brief synopsis of the first phase – The Induction Phase.
The Induction phase is probably the most difficult of the phases in the Atkins diet. Atkins is rather flexible about how long it should last ” but recommends two weeks. During this time, carbohydrate consumption should be severely curtailed ” up to 20 grammes per day. The idea is to enter a fat burning metabolic process called ‘ketosis’ which is when the body, being starved of glucose, begins to convert previously stored fat into the fatty acids needed to power the body. Weight loss during this period can be extreme ” some Atkins dieters report losses of 5-10 lbs. a week or more.
Learning the ideal carbohydrate levels for weight loss and for day to day intake after the weight loss ends, are the purposes of the three final phases in the Atkins diet. Millions of people are still losing the weight they want to on this diet ” but be aware of the dangers of taking in too much fat.
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